According to the change of market, the glass packaging enterprises in Shandong Province have adjusted the application of technology to accelerate their structural reformation . They have adopted new technologies and materials, altered or constructed a batch of glass tanks and installed a series of new mold testing equipments, including 22 world-class mold testing equipments introduced by 7 enterprises such as Changyu Wine and Chinese Herbs in Yantai, Gaomi Glass, Rizhao Glass, Shandong Huapeng Glass, Shandong Pharmaceutical Glass and Qingdao Jinghua Glass, together with 7 online testing equipments fetched in by 4 enterprises including Shandong Huapeng Glass, Xintai Glass, Qingdao Jinghua Glass and Chinese Herbs in Yantai. Moreover, Qingdao Jinghua Glass is quite outstanding in equipment introduction, including three 8-group double-drop bottle-making machines, one 10-group double-drop bottle-making machine and one online testing equipment. 

These projects have been completed and cast into operation now, which has energetically promoted the structural adjustment for the industrial products. The neutral low-aluminum boron silicon glass bottle developed by Shandong Pharmaceutical Glass has come out as the first of China in this field, with its price about 10 times higher than that of ordinary glass bottle. The performance of the product can completely meet the requirement of the United States Pharmacopoeia and European Pharmacopoeia, making China becomes the third country to produce neutral low-aluminum boron silicon glass bottle in the world. Shandong Huapeng Glass has invested 23 million yuan to purchase the 8-level electronic timing bottle-making machine from the world top BDF company in Italy as well as 3 online automatic testing machines from France (source: China Wine Newspaper http://www.cnwinenews.com/). Once the project is furnished with the world-leading small-mouth press-and-blow devices, the product quality can match the similar products in the world and the imported high-grade small glass bottle can be replaced. Upon this project’s kicking off, an extra profit amounting 9.8 million yuan will be added.

The structural adjustment of products and the development of new products have been speeded up by the considerable devotion to the technological upgrading and correct product orientation. In recent years, about 170 or more new products have been developed and the amount of users has risen from the previous 800 to 1200.

The development of the leaders in glass packaging industry is more typical for the entire industry. As the leader of pharmaceutical glass in China, Shandong Pharmaceutical Glass has succeeded in promoting the moulded injection vials for antibiotics as its leading products, holding a domestic market share over 70%. The company has attached great importance to the technological upgrading and confirmed by the installation of 4 new production lines of moulded injection vials for antibiotics and 1 monotube production line, including 1 production line from Emhart Technology Company. Thanks to all these equipments, an increase of 2.03 billion is observed in the production capacity of the newly installed production line of injection vials for antibiotics, containing 6.3 billion high-grade vials, and another 6000 tons are also contributed to the output of glass tube. In 2006, 70 million yuan was invested into 0.5 billion rubber bottle stoppers and 0.3 billion aluminum-plastic bottle caps. This large-scale investment has evidently boosted the company’s competence, with sales income, total tax of interest and profit on the top of the same field last year. 

Qingdao Jinghua Glass fully utilizes its advantages in technology, equipment and capital to develop new products and reduce the production of 640ml common beer bottles. While researching and developing small-capacity beer bottles and beverage bottles and wine bottles of all specifications, it expands the export business and inceases the value-added products. Recently, the supply on export products falls short of demand. The company has adjusted the product structure by technological upgrading, which will generate numerous economic benefits.

Global E-tag Market to Exceed 10 Billion by 2013

It is reported by a foreign magazine that the so-called e-tags such as RFID (radio frequency identification) will become a large new market for printers and printing ink manufacturers. At the latest conference on RFID and e-tag in Cambridge, UK, the experts present generally held that the demand of this low-cost and new technology was soaring. A conclusion was made that the output of the global e-tag market would rise to 4 billion by 2007 and 10 billion by 2013.

According to the statistics, the sales volume of global e-tags amounted to 1.5 billion tons in 2003 and several billion tons in 2007, and at least 5 billion tons 5 years later. However, the proportion of e-tags produced by e-ink and current printing equipments by printers can not be anticipated yet once the demand exceeds several billion tons. It is believed that this is dependent on how much the suppliers of micro-processor and electronic materials succeed in the development of plastic chips, and also relies on the application of the feasible and lowest-cost substitute of silicon semiconductor.

The electroconductive polyester is featured by pliability and machinability, which enables printing to be a feasible method to manufacture e-tags and relevant products in a large scale and at an easy rate. However, it is doubtful that the electroconductive polyester can be effectively sold at a low price even if the technology problem for the electroconductive polyester has been tackled, because the price will be definitely not too low due to the large amount of research expenses. Therefore, RFID tag manufacturers who plan to play a main role in this large market are carrying out a research on the methods of large-scale production similar to web printing.

Opportunities for printers

Printers still control competitiveness in this low-cost electronic age. Printing is characterized by fast speed, 10 times faster than the way RFID tag manufacturers use, thus its cost can be much lower.

The biggest breakthrough for printers is the electronic display technology. Some companies have introduced numerous printing methods and systems while some have succeeded in adopting new generation electronic color display printing ink for the greeting cards. Some companies are researching into the display of figures and images on the cards and tags according to the color change of printing ink when low energy is applied.

Screen printing will be mainly applied at the initial stage of e-tag manufacturing. But methods of large-scale manufacture will definitely be utilized at last, such as flexographic printing and gravure printing.

At present, the printing plants and e-ink manufacturers can produce e-tags with about 100bit micro processing capacity, which can provide information similar to that of a bar code, including manufacturer, product serials and batch number. In case that the e-tag is able to offer certain information content, RFID will replace the bar codes on cartons and pallet at least.

According to the report, there were about 0.5 billion RFID tags used for global logistics transportation in 2003. Once this tag is used in pallet and containers, the demand in this single field will hit 2 billion. If its usage is expanded to the airline transportation, the demand of e-tags will boast an annual increase of 0.2 billion.

Retailing Trade

Some worldly brand chain stores and commodity manufacturers have planned to utilize RFID tags on cartons and pallets in the next few years. Some companies try to apply RFID tag into the warehouse and implement the standard of electronic product code (EPC), which indicates that 5 billion tags will be needed. By the beginning of 2006, all suppliers must be capable of offering online tracking for all cartons of Walmart distribution network. 

The leading observers reckon that the increase of RFID e-tags in the global market is mainly backed by the manufacturers of famous brands, containing Coca Cola, Gillette, SaraLee, Unilever and Nestle.

Price of RFID tags

The growth speed of RFID tags will be pushed by the cost. Before all cartons and pallets utilize e-tags, the price for each tag will decrease to 5 cents from 30-50 cents, lowest level at present, according to Coca Cola.

It is estimated that 1 billion e-tags will be needed each year. They are exploring the profitable production methods even with the above-mentioned low unit price, said the current RFID tag manufacturer.

It is economical to attach such a tag on all commodities in case that the price of each tag can be controlled at one cent. The first articles adopting this tag are expensive ones, such as DVD, CD, battery, perfume and cigarette. The experts forecast that around over 10% products will use e-tags by 2015.

The demand for e-tags will reach several billion considering the low price of one cent or less than one cent. Furthermore, the tags will be also used in some new fields such as bank check, stamp, certificates, archives and dossier. Therefore, printing will be very competitive, the RFID tags can be manufactured in a large scale, and no additional basic investment will be required.

Material cost

The future main problem will lie in the gap between the cost of the core silicon chip on RFID tags and that of the e-ink of the integrate circuit. Then, the silicon chip will dominate the cost of the e-tag. The application of the latest large manufacturing equipments will assist decreasing the unit price of tags to 30 cents and the silicon chip will take up 60%-75% of the total unit price. The e-tag equipment manufacturer in Germany predicts that the price of silicon chip will not lower to less than 2 cents in a relatively long period, and the expenses of other materials will be about 2.5 cents, and all the rest are processing charges. Anyhow, the material expense will still account for the larger part of the total cost. There is also a warning that the great demand of several billion e-tags will result in abnormally expensive e-ink materials. For tags with low cost, the price of silver is also too high.

Recently, Siemens AG is adopting the technologies of screen printing, gravure printing and flexographic printing, and making plastic integrated circuit with polymer electrodes, insulator and semiconductor in laboratory. But the price of the electroconductive polymer unexpectedly amounts to 200 cents per gram. Besides, they are exploring the web-to-web technology to print e-tags as cheap as printing newspaper.

Due to the materials cost and technology obstacles, Siemens will slow down their development and firstly lay emphasis on the manufacturing equipments for forgery prevention trademarks with a capacity of 16bit. They plan to start with simple steps and make great efforts to develop web-to-web technology for mass production. It is expected that 3 years will be spent to cast the first product into the market and 10 years may be required for the production of RFID tags with a capacity of 96bit.

From: www.chinabzp.com